The lie that parents, taxpayers and the community at large will be told as students come back to school in the fall is that the State tests are "new", "unfair", "not representative", "purposely designed to confuse", and otherwise dismissed or discounted. Don't believe it. Instead, the NYSED has finally created a test and scored it based on standards that approach national standards as indicated by the National Assessment of National Progress (NAEP), a national test which randomly tests students at all levels on a variety of metrics from every state.

The truth is in the chart above (provided by NYSED).

In an effort to convince the public that students are learning in our public schools, the State Officer of Assessment has worked very hard to make very easy tests. The result, a sharp deviation from the national norm indicated in the chart above; otherwise known as grade inflation.

The Board of Education, which has spent months assiduously pushing off a discussion of the pathetically low minority graduations rates reported by the New York State Education Department last March, will meet tonight at a date and time best suited to insuring minimal turnout. And based on the reaction (or lack thereof) among the minority community in New Rochelle perhaps they are right. Perhaps if you live in the South End and are the parent of a black or latino child and are too disinterested to show up and express some concern of there being a 50-50 chance your kids will not graduate on time then maybe your kids really do deserve to be treated like cattle, penned into low-functioning abattoirs they call classrooms, and then "processed" like so much meat, in time to make room for the next batch.